In order to generate and print a document on an electrophotographic marking engine, it is first required to create a print job with an application program that generates and assembles defined pages into a single print job. This print job is then converted into a printer control language to provide file script that can be interpreted by a destination printer in order to generate rasterized data in a RIP engine. This rasterized data is then transferred to the marking engine associated with the printer and the subsequent transfer to paper stock.
In general, most documents are assembled in the print job such that they can be printed on a common paper stock. Whenever different paper stock is involved, a problem is presented. This is the case with respect to tab sheets wherein the sheet is designed to be the same length and width as a conventional page of the document with the exception of a portion thereof protruding from the side as a tab. The feed mechanism can usually handle the feeding of these tab sheets and even insertion of the tab in the appropriate place along the edge of the document. However, if the printing engine is also to print information on the tab, then there must be an accommodation made for this, due to the fact that the tab is outside of the normal image space for the document. As an example, consider an 8.5×11 sheet of paper that is typically edge fed in the marking engine. The dimension of the image along the feed path is typically equal to the width of the widest document accommodated in the marking engine—8.5 inches. When accommodating a tab sheet, a wider sheet, and thus a longer feed path, must be accommodated. This has been facilitated in the past with the use of a “shift” of the image, such that the original document actually places the tab information within the boundaries of a conventional size document and this is then shifted when the image for that page is actually printed.
When the document is printed, there will typically be provided two paper bins to source paper, one for the conventional paper and one for the tab stock. The tab stock will typically be conventional tab stock that is sequenced in such a manner that each subsequent tab is vertically offset along the right edge of the page. This requires information that is to be placed on a tab be correctly positioned along the edge and also that the correct tab sheet be selected from a tab sheet containing bin. Once this operation is synchronized, then the tab information will be placed on the correct position on the appropriate tab stock.